


All Things Bright and Broken

by JK_Rowling_Eat_My_Entire_Ass



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Escape, Freeform, Love, Non-human POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:42:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26476648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JK_Rowling_Eat_My_Entire_Ass/pseuds/JK_Rowling_Eat_My_Entire_Ass
Summary: Her first thought was of blue skies over a sea she had never seen, in a place far from the stinking pit from which she emerged, wings crippled, but somehow miraculous, unbroken. She stretched them to their fullest and the ragged membrane caught the wind for the first time in too long and it felt so good, so sweet, for the one who had forgotten what it was to be alive.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	All Things Bright and Broken

Her first thought was of blue skies over a sea she had never seen, in a place far from the stinking pit from which she emerged, wings crippled, but somehow miraculous, unbroken.  She stretched them to their fullest and the ragged membrane caught the wind for the first time in too long and it felt so _good,_ so sweet, for the one who had forgotten what it was to be alive.

She couldn’t fly. Yet another thing humans had taken from her. Taking and taking and taking, with no regard for the life that lies outside their narrow purview. Could they not sense, as she had, the wonder that lies all around them? Even in the well she could feel it, the silent grace of an owl in flight; the worms making new soil from dead matter; the meticulous love of a mother shrew in keeping her children safe, warm. How could anyone miss it? To be human must be a kind of willing blindness. A self-mutilation. Making themselves into pointed weapons of pointless suffering.

Her pit was cruel, but worst of all was what went on in the compound.

She felt them, the little lights. The people blessed enough to have a brightness inside, like hers, flowing through to touch the world outside. Every one of them shackled and chained, with a cold metal that had been stripped from the earth’s flesh and melted into something wicked. The strong ones put to toil. The unlucky met worse fates. Their agony was a symphony that weighed on her heart every night in the pit. But no more.

Tonight the lights are emerging, the compound charred and burning. Their jailors are leaking blood into the dirt, felled by an unseen foe. Picking up the ones who struggled to walk, each one freed, turning around to break the bindings of another; brightness seeping outwards, calling to her.

She was too wretched to help them now, so she keened for the sole human being who had ever treated her with kindness, from a throat hoarse with disuse. A pale hand crept over the top of the pit, then another, long fingernails clawing at the stone hard enough to draw blood. Morgana’s hunger for freedom was so vital, that her heart was fed, nourished even as her body withered into a husk.

The woman she loved was a living corpse. But then again, so was she.

Morgana had to be carried out of the well in the end, by a creature the dragon had never seen before, although she knew they were the one to burn the compound. They had shifted the lid that kept every beam of sunlight out of that dank pit. Unafraid, the creature patiently waited for Aithusa to scrabble out before throwing down a rope to her friend.

How to describe this miracle? Like a human, but covered with an iridescent carapace that threw rainbows in every direction. Like a human but like a dragon too, scaled and fire-blessed. Something in her blood sang to the creature, for she knew that they were like her— a thing new-forged and ancient, not yet caught in destiny’s strangling web.

The creature knelt, helping Morgana to her feet. Finally free, she could have wept with joy, had she any tears left. Aithusa nuzzled her side, not caring that her scales flaked off her snout. Mangled and mutilated, they had borne everything together. Borne enough to be reborn.

Her smile was the most beautiful thing Aithusa had ever seen. Radiating love into the darkness, into the core of her very being like a fire waking up. They were three, and they were one. Standing together to face the dawn, not because the future was any better, but for warmth of each other's embrace. Aithusa wanted to tell her a secret then, but she didn’t have the words.

Do you want to know a secret?

There is nothing of the earth that doesn’t have a life, and there is nothing that breathes that wasn’t dead first. Magic is not a tool. Not a sword or an axe or a hammer, or any of those small human words. It has a will.  The brightness of the world lives in the interstitial spaces. Leaking through the cracks of broken things, remaking them into something new. Something they couldn’t have even imagined.

You might think you are alone, that your pain is unheard. Know that you are not. You could be changing, even now.


End file.
